Luxury home prices fall in Q1: Jones Lang LaSalle

Prices in the first quarter fell 0.6 per cent quarter-on-quarter, and 4.3 per cent year-on-year.

Jones Lang LaSalle said the price decline was partly due to government measures to cool the property market.

Latest measures introduced in January this year are the seventh round of property cooling measures.

“Policy effect coupled with slower population and economic growth are likely to continue to add downside pressure to capital values, albeit moderately,” said Dr Chua Yang Liang, head of Research, Singapore and South East Asia at Jones Lang LaSalle.

“Growth in prices of mass market homes (is) significantly slower while new sales volume has also dropped, as recent data released by the Urban Redevelopment Authority has shown,” he added.

Dr Chua said that as a result, the price gap between high and mass market homes is likely to narrow, lending price support to the high-end segment in the mid-term.

At the same time, a separate report by another property consultant, CBRE, showed that Singapore’s first-quarter luxury home prices had remained flat but sales had slowed on a quarterly basis.

The report added that “both prices and rents will come under pressure in the months ahead, especially for newly completed projects which have been selling slowly”.

Besides Singapore, luxury home sales also declined in Hong Kong and some Chinese cities, mainly due to property tightening measures.

But overall, luxury home prices across Asia rose in the first quarter of this year.

The CBRE Asia Luxury Residential Price Index rose by 1.5 per cent in the first quarter, driven by strong price growth in New Delhi, Mumbai, Manila and Kuala Lumpur.

The Jones Lang LaSalle Residential Index showed that average capital values across the nine Asian markets it tracked were up 2.2 per cent quarter-on-quarter and 6.1 per cent year-on-year.